[citation needed] Cook, along with Mary Church Terrell, Anna J. Cooper, Angelina Weld Grimke, and Nannie Helen Burroughs, "exemplified the third generation of African American woman suffragists who related to both the Black and the white worlds.
[2] Coralie was the younger of two daughters from Albert Barbour Franklin and Mary Elizabeth Edmondson, both of whom were enslaved by a Southern aristocratic family.
In 1870, their father, Albert Franklin, a "very well respected man amongst his community", placed his two daughters in the Storer Normal School at Harpers Ferry.
[3] While attending college, Franklin was a member of the Red Cross, the NAACP, the Book Lovers Club and the Juvenile Protective Society.
She also taught a year of school in Hannibal, Missouri,[9] before she and colleague Mary Church Terrell moved to Washington, D.C., to seek careers in education.
[14] She spent five years as head of the Home for Colored Orphans and Aged Women in Washington D. C.[3] Later in her life she served as a member of the Council of Social Welfare.
[11][12][8] She was the only African-American woman invited to give an official statement at Susan B. Anthony's 80th birthday celebration at the Lafayette Opera House in 1900.
[10] Her address praised the movement for encouraging women to recognize their potential political power and their responsibility to one another, and emphasized the necessity interracial empathy.
[10] In fact, she addressed Anthony directly, stating,"...and so Miss Anthony, in behalf of the hundreds of colored women who wait and hope with you for the day when the ballot shall be in the hands of every intelligent woman; and also in behalf of the thousands who sit in darkness and whose condition we shall expect those ballots to better, whether they be in the hands of white women or Black, I offer you my warmest gratitude and congratulations.
She felt the beliefs of this faith would benefit young African Americans by helping them realize their potential and provide them with a more positive outlook on life.